My kid's school was put on lock down today - Pls read & tell me if I should be upset.

a reply to: MagesticEsoteric

Is it normal policy to keep the kids in place at the very same building the bomb was suspected to be . Seems kind of dumb to me .

Two hours to evacuate a school?!?! If there had been a bomb it had time to explode a hundred times times. In a bomb threat the evacuation bell should be rung, everybody leave their stuff where it is and walk out to an assembly point.

a reply to: MagesticEsoteric

You have every right to be upset, for two reasons, and I would be probably cause an even bigger stink than you, for two reasons:

Supposing there was a threat (credible or not), A) they did not inform you of the potential threat AND B) they did not allow your kid to contact you (or you being able to contact your kid, even though he snuck his phone into class). You mentioned Oregon, well, if ALL these students had their phone confiscated after the fact, and the parents, hearing that there was a mass shooting at the school their kid attends tries to contact their kid by text or call afterwards and the kids do not have their phones so that you can at least find out if they're safe, I would be FUMING and I would make a stink. You have a RIGHT to know your kid is safe, period.

That said, schools go on lock down every so often here, due either to a police chase, a robbery, a shooting (all when the suspect is still at large), but I do not know if the parents are notified (I don't have kids and I know no one who has been affected). But that this was, apparently, at your child's school, is troubling.

You have a right to communicate with your child (or loved one, for that matter) and receive information regarding their well-being, in the event of an emergency or similar situation. Period.

They're going to deny or prevent your from contacting your own child in an emergency??? Oh hell no.

As far as what's involved in actually picking your child up afterwards, I recall in a similar situation (I think it was a school shooting here in GA actually), where the kids were bused to a different location and the parents had to bring photo IDs as proof that they were the actual parents, which infuriated some people because this was a predominantly minority school and not all the parents HAD proper ID, so there was that. :/

I have only a sketchy knowledge of the law regarding leaving your children in the care of teachers, but in this country there is the term "in loco parentis" used a lot. It means "in place of the parent" so if your child is in danger the teacher should act as a parent would. In my opinion a parent would want to know why the lockdown and finding out it was a bomb then would evaucate their child immediately, not wait for a bus to take them somewhere there were toilets and drinking fountains available and had the right kind of public liability insurance in case something happened while the were on the campus.

Absolutely call the school and speak to other parents. Go together to the next school meeting, ask for a newsletter outlining what school procedures are in different scenarios so all the parents know what to do in case of a drill. In fact even though I am in Canada and I assume you are in the US I think I am going to proactively do the same, all of us parents should. We have the right to know what will happen to our kids, what the plan is, where they might be taken People on this thread telling you they followed procedure are saying so from a place of knowledge!! They know the procedure and therefore the MIGHT not panic as much if a crisis were really to occur. We all should, I've got one in grade 6 and one in grade 11 as well as a 2 year old. I hate to even talk about it, as tempting fate, but not many school shootings in Canada. The schools do have shooter drills though, bomb threats? I have no idea and I'm going to find out. I know they have a colour coded system and the littler kids I do not think know what the colours mean exactly.

All of this nonsense in the past few years makes me want to just keep my kids home. My area ,in Ontario, has recently started have "emergency broadcast system tests" across all television, cell phones and radio. I'm going to quote it I have the language saved because it is so weird , We have not had these types of tests since the early 80's during the cold war where it would just say "This is a test of the emergency broadcast system, this is only a test".

Wait I will have to come back to insert that image, I know off topic but sort of related a bit...

Did you get a bunch of papers that you had to sign at the beginning of the school year??

In those papers there should have been a form that went through a step by step contingency plan in the event of emergencies should one arise at the school. This would include lockdowns, inclement weather, etc.

On that piece of paper it should have also stated where they would relocate the children should they ever need to evacuate the original premises.

We get one every year here and it does state that they will notify you as soon as possible or after they are safely relocated.

I understand where you're coming from as I have a child in school too. This has happened here on more than one occasion and I was informed that evening by a robo call that something had happened at school that day... Which is a good thing as my teenage daughter doesn't usually inform me unless it's something grand.

Like you, I would prefer to know right away if something was going on... But that's the public education system for you.

Should I be upset at the way this was handled?

Upset? No.
Mad As Hell? YES! Your son was in danger and you were not notified. Your son was taken off school grounds, to a place unknown to you and you were not notified. Another example of the "WE know what's best for YOUR child" system of schooling. I'd be asking "If they thought the threat was real enough to evacuate, why did they stay in the school for so long?"

originally posted by: MagesticEsoteric

originally posted by: wagnificent
If your district has robo dialers, then those probably should have been used, but if you were expecting a live person to contact you in the midst of a crisis, then that's pretty absurd. When something serious enough to cause an evacuation is going down, I don't think anyone is going to sit down and start dialing parents. In fact if someone did that, I would see that as negligent because it doesn't follow the common sense emergency procedure:

1. Assess the threat
2. Alert the authorities (without creating panic)
3. Get everyone to safety (again, without creating panic)
4. Call parents (who are certainly going to panic)

From what you described, it seems like that's what they did.

Of course I didn't expect a school employee to call me and every other parent individually. That is just completely unrealistic and absurd.

I think the school could have handled the whole situation better. Maybe I'm wrong...maybe not.

A situation can almost always be handled better or differently in some way.

The flip side of "call all the parents right away!" is that the natural reaction of those parents will be to haul ass to the school to get their kid. If it's a bomb threat, you just added a couple hundred people to the potential blast radius, and created a traffic nightmare around the school.

Not saying they could've handled things quicker, but maybe there was a problem getting the buses organized? Maybe there was a communication issue with the university? There's a whole lot of moving parts in a situation like that, and one snag can easily have a trickle down effect.

To be clear, I don't think you're over reacting. But I do think there are other factors you may not be aware of.

a reply to: MagesticEsoteric
Hell yes you should be angry! How many times I have seen schools on lock down in the past 5 yearsmor so I can not even count. Here in LA, They break into regular programing to let us know what's going on.

It sounds like the media was not aware of the lock down. Even so. If you child was in any danger, you should have been made aware! Clearly if the kids were put on buses there was at least enough credibility to the threat the school reacted.

My question is why it took them an hour and a half to evacuate the kids to buses. It took them almost 2 hrs to get the kids, out of which was perceived to be harms way. On top of that, all of the parents should have been made aware, the second the threat was concidered real.